I’m not a big fan of short story collections but in researching reviews on this one, as one of the books being defended in the Canada Reads competition, I have to say this one has caught my curiousity enough I may have a look at it. The only book written to date by author David Bezmozgis, this book won the 2004 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was finalist in the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
The book is seven loosely linked short stories narrated by Mark Berman who starts out as the six year old son of Roman Berman a former Soviet athletic trainer who immigrates to Canada in the early 80’s. Roman aspires to become a message therapist in Canada. The family are Soviet Latvian Jews which parallels Bezmozgis background. Although some have taken his writing to be auto-biographical Bezmozgis told Barbara Carey in an interview he has a very poor memory and that he thought what did happen to him could have been shaped into much of story.
February 25, 2007 at 9:47 am · Filed under Canada Reads
For the last five years CBC Radio Canada has produced Canada Reads. The program is sort of a survivor type program with five prominent Canadians chosen to select a Canadian book to defend as worthy of being read by all Canadians. The books are debated over the course of five days with one book eliminated each day until only one is left standing. The debates start today on CBC Radio One at 11am and 7pm or you’ll be able to download them later as an MP3 to listen to.
This year’s panelists are the finalists from the last five years. If you’d like to explore the past years you can visit here. The panelists and the books for this year are: Read the rest of this entry »
This isn’t a book I’ve read, or for that matter, heard of before I came across this article in the Toronto Star the other day. The Peel Catholic School Board (located in the Toronto, Ontario area) has pulled the book from the school library shelves after A parent complained that it contained explicit sexual content. The board is going to review the book before determining if a ban is appropriate.
This is a book published in 1995 and let’s see, it is 12 years later when a parent complains. I think I’d be reviewing the parent, but that’s just me. To borrow a quote from Mark Twain “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” — ‘nough said Read the rest of this entry »
February 3, 2007 at 4:29 am · Filed under Site News
Since the topic of this site, books tends to be based more on opinion than cold, hard, refutable facts I wanted a way for not only me to give my opinion and rating of a book but also for you the visitor to give yours back. There is the comment section which I encourage everyone to use, but now, there is a rating system I’ve added. Two of them actually.
One is what either me or the author of the entry rates the book being talked about. The second part is for you the visitor to give your opinion and we’ll see how it stacks against the one set by the entry writer. Enjoy. One point to keep in mind. I will sometimes write reviews of a book I’ve not read and I will state that I have not read the book. Any rating given is based on my opinion formed in researching the entry.
If no ratings appear on the writer’s side for an entry, it means that the writer choose not to rate on that entry. You can if you want.
February 1, 2007 at 7:00 pm · Filed under Commentary
Somehow it seems fitting that I’ve chosen to write the first entry on this new blog about Micheal Kerens and his book “Blogosphere: The New Political Arena
“. I will state at the outset I have not read the book, nor am I likely to. I did locate and read this piece of drek published in the Canadian Journal of Communication in 2004. I suspect that this ‘essay’ formed the basis of his approach to the book.
The book projects the message that bloggers are:
“Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills…” — Globe & Mail, Jan. 31, 2007
The problem with general statements like that is they come up to bite some. Not all bloggers consider themselves to be rebels against anything. Many consider themselves to be pursuing an outlet for their thoughts and willingness to share them. Not unlike academics who spew forth what they consider to be intellectual wisdom.
In the essay reference above the author shows himself to have an ill-formed approach to ‘understanding’ blogging. He acknowledges that the very nature of the beast makes it difficult to attempt to analyze blogging based on traditional criteria:
During the 2003 annual meeting of the Association of Internet Studies (when some of the first fruits of communication research on blogging were presented), it became immediately apparent how careful one has to be in applying traditional research methods to this new medium. Standard attempts to generalize about blogs on the basis of random sampling turned out to be quite inappropriate in the absence of a clear, stable, finite universe of blogs to be sampled.
Reviews of and commentary about books, reading and anything related. Would you like to contribute your reviews? Read “Contribute to This Site?” to find out how.
